What Causes Depression??

Of all the medical breakthroughs that have occurred in recent years, one that continues to elude researchers involves the nature of depression. While we’ve come a long way in developing methods for treating depression with medicine and therapy, a fundamental question remains: What causes depression?

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, cutting-edge research has presented new opportunities for studying people with depression. Brain-imaging technologies, like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), have shown that the brains of people with depression actually look different from those of people without depression. The brain regions that regulate behavior, sleep, appetite, and mood function abnormally, and neurotransmitters seem to be out of balance.

Though researchers can see all this, they can’t see what causes depression to occur in the first place. The current reasoning is that depression is caused by a combination of genetics and environmental, psychological, and biochemical factors.